Sectional doors (such as garage doors, factory doors, warehouse doors, and other similar closures) are generally comprised of a plurality of panels extending horizontally, which are articulated together so as to be able to slide vertically and fold at the top of the opening in order to then extend horizontally in the upper part of the building.
Conventional articulation systems for these sectional doors are formed of rigid hinges secured from place to place on one side of the door such as the frontside for connecting pairs of panels. However, these systems have serious drawbacks: there are disadvantages with the seals at the joints between panels, long and unappealing appearance of the hinges, some danger for users (in particular the danger of pinching fingers between the panels during closing).
Some systems with flexible hinges are known, in which a sheet of flexible material is fixed along the stops of the edges of two panels in such a manner that they are connected by a flexible thickness, enabling the articulation because of the deformation of the flexible strip (French patent 2,421,332, U.S. Pat. No. 3,527,283). Such systems lead to an improved seal, but nonetheless still have significant drawbacks in that they are fragile, of short life and do not achieve a very precise positioning of the panels. In particular, during articulation play, all forces are concentrated at the point of a relatively thin, flexible strip in order to permit a good closing of the panels. This thickness is sometimes deformed in an unsymmetrical manner in the case of poorly balanced loads and causes a premature aging. These drawbacks in practice prevent the use of such systems with flexible hinges for sectional doors since, by reason of their dimensions, such doors may be subjected to great loads. Further, these systems do not prevent the danger of pinching fingers between panels.
The present invention seeks to provide a new articulation system of the type comprising on one hand a hinge in the nature of a flexible profile or strip arranged between panels along the length thereof, and on the other hand cooperating panel edge sections for maintaining the flexible hinge.
An object of the invention is to provide a system which combines excellent qualities of sealing with a great sturdiness permitting in practice the application of the invention to sectional doors.
Another object of the invention is to assure a precise positioning of the panels with respect to each other, a precision positioning which is comparable to that of rigid hinges.
Another object is to reduce considerably the risks for users, in particular the risk of pinching fingers between panels.